9:00am- A calm start to our day, and Capt. Kane on the Ocean Explorer already had some animals lined up for us to see! About 100 common dolphins off the Balboa Pier really dazzled our guests. After this sighting, our two boats split up and Ryan went to investigate towards the oil rigs, 10 miles out to sea. Another great pod, this time short beaked common dolphin numbering about 200. Taylor looked off Laguna Beach but wasn’t able to find anything else. Right now there isn’t much forage fish in our waters for some reason, and whales and dolphins a little challenging to find. This will change within a few days, as it always does, but for now a little dry spell.
11:30am- Just one boat departed at 11:30am, and Capt. Ryan set out to look at a new area, in deeper water. About 5.5 miles from shore we found a great pod of 30 offshore bottlenose dolphin. While that might not sound like an impressive number, this pod became super active when we showed up, and for the better part of an hour had a blast playing in our boat wake and riding the bow. It was one of the best offshore bottlenose dolphin sightings of the year. Here’s a picture of a dolphin calf Capt. Ryan took: 